The sheer hatred that republicans have for the loyal orders
is at times frightening to observe and it says everything
about the contempt and the venom which these people have for
all things British and Unionist.
Faces contorted with hatred, men and women alike, they spewed
obscenities at the members of two lodges, Ballysillan and
Ligoniel, walking past the Ardoyne shops at the end of the
Tour of the North parade.
It was the same at the Springfield Road as the dignified
parade of Shankill No.9 District emerged from Ainsworth Avenue
during the annual Whiterock parade, and it has been the same
at many country Orange parades.
Republicans in fact are mounting attacks on many fronts against
the Orange Institution. The most obvious manifestation is
when these people get close enough to Orange parades to hurl
insults - and missiles.
But each day the airwaves are full of vitriol as republicans
vent their spleen on programmes like BBC 'Talkback', and the
columns of the Belfast daily papers carry a non-stop barrage
of hostile letters.
This is no mere coincidence. The Orange Institution and its
parades are prime targets for the republican movement and
have been for years. A carefully planned and orchestrated
campaign on many fronts is being waged against a Christian
organisation whose parades have never constituted a threat
to anyone or any community.
Nothing less than the destruction of the Orange Order, or
at the very least its impotence will satisfy these hate-filled
people who seem incapable of understanding the concept that
freedom and liberty are cherished rights won at great sacrifice
by past generations and should apply to Orangemen as much
as anyone else.
Such is the extremity of the case presented by these people
that nothing less than the reversal of the Plantation of Ulster
will satisfy them. As a Glengormley reader wrote in the 'Belfast
Telegraph' on July 8, these people gloat because they appear
to be winning the numbers game by ethnically cleansing what
were once Protestant or mixed areas.
But such an evil campaign as this cannot in the end succeed.
It will run its course and will no doubt inflict a lot more
misery on innocent people, but it will end as the Nazi and
Bolshevik regimes did in defeat.
It may take many years, or on the other hand it may end much
more quickly, but God will defend the right and in His good
time the sinister plans of men will come to nothing.
But there is also a heavy onus on Orangemen to witness to
their Christian faith and to ensure that the Order to which
they belong is not sullied by any untoward behaviour. Orangemen
should not need to be reminded that they must not give offense
to their Roman Catholic neighbours or fellow countrymen.
The brethren must place their faith in God who has blessed
Ulster many times since the Protestant people carved out a
prosperous community from a wilderness in the 1600s - a community
in which Roman Catholic as well as Protestants have prospered.
The wording on a Shankill Road Orange banner says it all
- "If God be for us, who shall be against us?" Orangemen
must constantly strive to live up to their obligations and
the commitments they have made for their Reformed Faith.
The God who answered the cries and the pleas for help in
1641, 1688, 1795, 1798, 1912, 1921 and all the other dates
when Protestants faced a threat to their survival in Ireland
will not ignore similar pleas today, when Protestants must
turn to Him in humility and in sincere and honest fashion.
Secular Protestantism which has little time for worship or
for observance of God's laws will not save Ulster in its hour
of need. It must come straight from the heart and it must
be in the tradition of those God-fearing men of Ulster who
stood on the walls of Derry in 1688 and defied the armies
of King James, or those in more recent times who defended
Ulster in 1921 when the IRA murder gangs tried to overthrow
the lawfully and democratically elected Government of the
new State.
True Protestantism will not look to drugs, to illegal violence
or to drinking dens for the preservation of Northern Ireland,
but to the Christian qualities and principles on which this
province was founded and for so many years prospered. Let
all true Orangemen resolve to uphold those Christian principles
to the best of their ability.
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